Town of Strangers

There is a Welsh word, hiraeth, which describes a long­ing for home – par­tic­u­lar­ly one that is hard to return to, often because it exists in mem­o­ry. Town of Strangers deals with this amor­phous Celtic feel­ing as writer, direc­tor and prin­ci­pal cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Treasa O’Brien asks peo­ple in the town of Gort, one of the most diverse towns in Ire­land, what home means to them and how they came to be in this unlike­ly place. 

Peo­ple who have come from else­where – Syr­i­an refugees, Trav­eller teenagers, Brazil­ian meat fac­to­ry work­ers, hip­pies from Eng­land, or peo­ple from just down the road – are inter­viewed in neu­tral spaces and in their hous­es, mak­ing cof­fee, tend­ing to their gar­dens, cook­ing, doing their make­up. ​‘Home’ in this sense con­sists of a series of actions as much as it does of a phys­i­cal space. All the while those filmed reveal inti­mate sto­ries of their fam­i­lies, loves and jour­neys. They describe peo­ple they miss, things they’ve left behind, their dreams. The film­mak­er treats them all with equal dig­ni­ty, as their tes­ti­monies shape the documentary. 

The film is referred to through­out, and the process of film­ing, such as set­ting up back­drops, peo­ple preen­ing ready for the cam­era to roll and snap­ping into action, is itself filmed. The mutu­al antag­o­nism at play between those in front of and those behind the cam­era is intrigu­ing to observe. There are moments in which the direc­tor seems exhaust­ed, some­times caught in an air of fazed aban­don while lean­ing against a laun­drette wash­ing machine. Her process and the pur­pose of the project appears to be devel­op­ing in real time, which is strange and mes­meris­ing to witness. 

Town of Strangers, for all that it con­cerns real peo­ple and their some­times ter­ri­bly real sto­ries of seek­ing refuge, has an eerie, folk­loric qual­i­ty large­ly thanks to the cin­e­matog­ra­phy: shots pan upwards unex­pect­ed­ly; chil­dren amble unex­plained between trees in the woods; teenagers sneak into aban­doned hous­es to play imag­i­nary instru­ments; and O’Brien’s bright red van – also her home – drifts through the grey town, a con­stant metaphor for the alien.

“They say there are two sto­ries,” says our inter­locu­tor to the cam­era, sit­ting in the door­way of her van and eat­ing out of a saucepan, ​“A stranger comes to a town, or a per­son goes on a jour­ney.” The ques­tion as to which one this is hov­ers – it’s both. Maybe she’s the stranger. Maybe we are. But the jour­ney is undoubt­ed­ly home­wards. Though Town of Strangers is dis­con­cert­ing in its con­struc­tion, exper­i­men­tal and cer­tain­ly not smooth, it feels like a film made with such deter­mi­na­tion that it is hard to ques­tion its integri­ty as it evolves into a thought­ful and man­i­fold mus­ing on ver­sions of home, and on film­mak­ing itself. 

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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